My interest in Prichard began thirty-five years ago, and I am still in pursuit of him. I blame Roland Mathias. He it was suggested I write something about Prichard for the Anglo-Welsh Review, the magazine he edited with such distinction for sixteen years. I had never heard of him, and since there was always a good deal of levity in our conversation, for all I knew the invitation might have been a joke. But no, it was meant seriously. He told me that in 1828, Prichard had made a modest stir in Wales with the publication of a novel, The Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Shôn Catti, and for that alone deserved to be better known among Anglo-Welsh antecedents. The enlargement of knowledge about writers and writing from Wales was one of the sacred duties of AWR; I was conscious of the responsibility I had been given.

The Dictionary of Welsh Biography gave me the name, Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn Prichard, told me he was both writer and actor, that he was born in the parish of Trallong, Breconshire and, on the evidence of one of his letters, ‘dated 24 Nov. 1875’ quoted in a journal, Cymru Fu (1889), that he died in 1875 or 1876. As I discovered, much of this is incorrect, but the greater surprise is that the entry does not mention that Prichard lost his nose. It was perfectly obvious to the few who met him and wrote about the encounter - as plain, ...